In bed with… Burudu

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10 Mai 2018

Have you guys heard of Burudu? Buru who? BuruDU! They’re the duo behind the hit Zardin Zetwal with local rapper Myckee from A4C. And they’re playing at La Isla 2068 this Saturday.

Currently based in Mumbai, the duo features Mauritian-born Nakul Sharma, 26, and Sahil Bhatia, 28, originally from Delhi. After releasing their first album, Ditties, last November, they set off on their first tour. As one of the headlining acts for this Saturday’s La Isla 2068, lekip Kozé caught up with this fascinating pair to discover more.

Burudu. It sounds like the name of an old guru. Are you music gurus?

Sahil: That’s the first time I’ve heard that comparison… that’s a good one.

Nakul: (laughs) We’d never make that sort of comparison, because we’re so clear about how far we have to keep going to make it. Right now, we’ve been working for 5 years, but there is still so much to learn.

How did you come together to create music and decide, “Hey, we make a good team?”

Sahil: When we first met in university in London, in 2012, we realised we both had this passion for creating music as a hobby. We then checked out each other’s music, which sparked our interests even more because it was two completely different worlds. From there, we became friends, started sharing our individual creations and collaborating on it.

Nakul: It wasn’t really thought through in fact. In 2013 we decided to make a song together and upload it to SoundCloud, we called it Red Cat. We named it after this chilled lounge bar in Pereybere, because it gave off the same sort of vibe. Twenty days after putting it online, I went on to SoundCloud to check and saw a message from the label Spindisc Recordings. They had sent it two days after we posted the song. And within a matter of a day, they signed the song on, it was mastered and a month later it was released. It was a great feeling, because, it was really cool for us to be on all the streaming services. So we said, “okay, let’s make one more.” That one got picked up with another label. By then we figured out that we really liked working together and we started learning from each other. There was no real conversation about it, we just kept going. For the first two years, other than the first 6 months when we were in London together, we were in two different parts of the world. He was in London first, then Delhi, I was in Mumbai. And we sort of decided, to continue, one song at a time, and we were having fun with it, so we kept doing it hoping that maybe it would lead somewhere.

So how do you create music in different parts of the world?

Nakul: We would have Skype sessions and exchange files. He would send me something, I’d work on it and then send it back to him and he’d work on it again, and continue back and forth like that.

Sahil: We loved it, it didn’t seem like work. We’d be on Skype and that moment when I would say, “okay I like this sound, can you send it to me?”, it was like a 20-minute wait between that and receiving it….

20 minutes?

The Internet was really bad back then in 2013, 2014 (laughs)…. especially in India… It’s a lot better now!

Your musical style varies from song-to-song. As newcomers, isn’t it better to create an identifiable musical signature for worldwide audiences to recognise you?

In our minds, the sound has a certain direction, and we are on that path where we know what we enjoy making. Electronic elements is a strong part of our music, but so are heavy orchestral elements and synths, which we blend together. We’re two different minds working on the songs, so it leads to something different every time, which is why it isn’t as consistent in terms of a particular sound. We’re also discovering ourselves man. As we go along we discover other styles of music that we like. From a creative perspective, we don’t let anything stop us. We’re young, it’s time to experiment different things, and hopefully, through that, we get a following that understands the different spaces we come from and how we blend together.

What inspires and drives your music to transcend specific genres?

Sahil: The things that are most important to us are groove and emotion. It has to be something that can move you physically and mentally.

Nakul: We both have to absolutely love a song to put it out. If you’re not in love with what you’re releasing, you can’t expect anybody else to like it either.

What emotions do you try to convey through your music?

To tell a story, definitely, through music and lyrics. I don’t think we’re bound by a specific kind of emotion when we create music. But we gravitate to music that moves us and we always add this sense of hopefulness in our music, this light at the end of the tunnel. So there is this sort of melancholic space to our music but it isn’t sad, it’s hopeful.

It seems Mauritius is a source of inspiration for your music, so much so, that both of the two music videos you’ve shot so far feature local artists, Myckee on Zardin Zetwal, and Daniella Bastien on Still Laying Here. Why did you choose these songs in particular as singles?

Zardin Zetwal was very impulsive. We had already created Ditties, which was going to come out later that year, so we didn’t plan on releasing anything before that. And then we met Myckee, and we loved his vibe, and things just got going from there. We met him on a Wednesday, on Friday we were in the studio recording the song. On Saturday, I called up Arvind from Hysteria Productions, for the music video and I was like, “please, help me, let’s make something happen”. On Sunday, we met for pre-production of the video, and on Monday, Arvind had pulled off the video in one day. Some things are just meant to be, I guess.

And then when it came to the album, we wanted to create one music video for it as well. We already had the location and concept of the video that was going to be created and knew the director. We simply sat with the album and we asked ourselves which song do we want to give a visual to. We agreed on Still Laying Here, a song that strongly connects with us, because of what Daniella was saying and musically, and we thought the video would fit nicely with this song.

How did the collaboration with Daniella come about?

Nakul: Well, I came into the studio one day and Sahil had created this song. I listened to it and was blown away. So we got to work and once things got going, we decided to make it collaboration. A while later, we had a Skype call with a friend in Mauritius. We played it for him and he suggested Daniella Bastien to us. He said, “she does spoken-word poetry, plays the ravanne, and is incredibly talented.” We knew nothing about her. The day after he met up with her and played her the song… She loved it and agreed to collaborate with us. So we called her to discussed the song and the vibes we wanted it to give off. And the entire song was wrapped up online before we ever met Daniella in person.

These tracks gained popularity not only in Mauritius but in India and across the world as well, showing how music has no language barriers. Doesn’t the audience need to understand the lyrics of a song to be able to connect with it?

Sahil: I feel to a large extent that yes, people do need to understand the lyrics, because it’s a very easy way to connect with the music, through language. Conveying emotions through words. But I also feel, that there is a lot of people who listen to any form of music simply for the enjoyment. For those kinds of people, language is not a barrier. When I listened to Zardin Zetwal for the first time, even though I didn’t understand what he was saying, it was Myckee’s energy that was pulling me in. Similarly, when I heard Daniella, the way she speaks, she has a beautiful voice that draws you in. So it was first the beauty of her voice that made me want to understand what she was saying. Now that I understand it, I can completely submerge myself within the song.

Nakul: Being able to understand the lyrics adds another dimension to the game. But it’s also a sound, an instrument that you can phonically connect with. I first connect with the melodies the person is vocally playing with and what the words sound like. Only after I get hooked onto that, I would ask myself what does this mean. And I think that applies to different spaces of music because we have music coming out of so many parts of the world in different languages.

How do your international fans react to these two songs that are sung in the exotic language of Mauritian Creole?

Sahil: Most people who have heard Zardin Zetwal, have also seen the video. And the thing that sweeps them away is Myckee’s flow, they always like, “wow, this guy has massive energy.”

Nakul: It’s a song we’ve never performed live because for us it makes no sense to perform it without Myckee. We’ll perform it for the first time at La Isla 2068. Probably without the video, it wouldn’t have crossed over. It’s crazy though, we had GQ India premiering a song that’s heavily in Mauritian Creole. Still Laying Here is powerful… just the instrumentation by itself. Then Daniella’s voice, if we pull out the meaning of the lyrics, it adds a lot to the energy and impact of the song. So simply as a sonic experience, it connects. We have people who come up to us and ask us, “what’s the language?” or “what does it mean?” For some shows, we explained to the audience what it means and who the artist is before we perform the song, so they can connect with the song on a deeper level.

A bit about Nakul Sharma

Nakul, you’re Mauritian, briefly tell us about your story in connection to Mauritius.

My mother is Mauritian. My father is Indian. They had an arranged marriage, because my mom also had extended family in India. Shortly after, I was born in Mauritius, but we moved back to India when I was like 5 months old. Still, we would come to Mauritius every year for summer vacation to visit my grandparents. Mauritius really became like a second home when I moved here for school, from 13 years old to 18. It was during these years that I picked up music. I had DJ friends who were like 15, 16, so that’s how I got exposed to electronic music for the first time. I remember, I was walking in the library at school one day and saw two friends sitting in front of their laptops, headphones on and bobbing their heads. I asked them, “what are you doing?” They said, “making music!” He opened Fruity Loops, a computer programme for music production. I took the mouse, went in and tried it. I played it back and heard this noise. I thought to myself, “Wow, I just did that and I heard that.” I remember taking the software from him. And since then, I’ve had no social life! (laughs) And that’s why Mauritius has a special place in my heart and transcends into our music as Burudu. And it’s the biggest blessing that Sahil connects with Mauritius as well.

You play the ravanne during your live performances. How did you learn to play it?

Yes, but I don’t consider myself to be a great player. I just picked it up and tried it out. When I met Daniella, I learnt a few things from her. We only use it on one song as of now, which is Still Laying Here. Maybe I’m not playing it the way it’s supposed to be played, but I enjoy it, it’s a good instrument. And I’m proud that it comes from Mauritius, it’s good to take it along and represent a little bit.

Which artist, local or international, would you really love to work with?

Nakul: This is a great example of what we were talking about earlier. When you listen to their music, you don’t understand what they’re talking about…

Sahil: Yeah, they only sing in Icelandic.

Nakul: …but the world connects with it. They don’t know the meaning of the lyrics but his voice has so much emotion.

Sahil: Oh my goodness!

Learning kreol time for Sahil. « Manz ar li! » says Nakul.

Tell us about your upcoming work, any other local collabs in the pipeline?

We’re in the process of working on our next album. When we toured in Bali we collaborated with some local artists over there and we hope to do the same here. We don’t usually enter a studio with a massive agenda. We jam and see what happens. So yes, we’re definitely interested in working with people in Mauritius.

How do you about La Isla 2068?

Sahil: As far as people listening to our music in Mauritius, we’ve heard some good things, but we’ve never played a show here. So I’m very excited to play at La Isla 2068 and see how that turns out. I’ve got so many ideas, and I want to play the show right now… but I’ll wait.

Nakul: Mauritius is extremely special to both of us. We just hope that we’ll get to see a few people there that hopefully connect with the music. We’re going to have Myckee and Daniella joining us on stage as well. So I hope to have a great show and most importantly, just continue this musical connection that Burudu has formed with Mauritius in one way or another.

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